Peru in 2011

Area:

1,285,216 sq km (496,225 sq mi)

Population

(2011 est.): 29,249,000

Capital:

Lima

Head of state and government:

Presidents Alan García and, from July 28, Ollanta Humala

Peru was enveloped in presidential and congressional elections in 2011, and little else seemed to matter. Pres. Alan García could not succeed himself, and, absent his candidacy, the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP, also called the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) nominated no one. The race was considered wide open, with five major candidates: Ollanta Humala, a former military officer and the 2006 candidate of the Peru Wins (Gana Perú), a coalition that included the Peruvian Nationalist Party, which Humala had founded; former president Alejandro Toledo of Peru Possible; the former mayor of Lima, Luís Castañeda of the National Solidarity Party; Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of the Alliance for Great Change, a former economics minister and technocrat; and Keiko Fujimori of Fuerza 2011, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori.

Under the Peruvian constitution a candidate had to win a simple majority of the popular vote to be elected. Given that the polls showed substantial support for all five major candidates, it was all but certain that no one would win the first round in April 2011 outright. However, because Peru’s political parties were less parties than admiration societies for their leaders—with little institutional durability of their own—the electorate was highly fluid and volatile. Most Peruvian voters were centrists, but in the April election the centrist candidates—Toledo, Kuczynski, and Castañeda—split about 42% of the total vote, which meant that none of them could advance to the runoff round. Instead, the two extreme candidates, Humala (with 31% of the vote) and Fujimori (23%), moved on. Both carried considerable baggage. Fujimori, a conservative, was accused of having been guided by her father’s legacy and advisers. Humala had led a failed coup attempt against the elder Fujimori and had presented himself in 2006 as a fervent nationalist with open backing from Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez (a strategy that backfired badly in that election). Humala tried to convince voters that he had moved away from Chávez and was modeling himself after Brazil’s popular former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”). Meanwhile, Fujimori claimed that she would build on her father’s popularity in provincial areas and would continue Peru’s neoconservative economic model, but she tried to convince voters that her father and his advisers would not be in charge from behind the scenes. Many Peruvians expressed their frustration with both candidates. In the second round, held on June 5, Humala won by the slim margin of 51.4% to Fujimori’s 48.6%.

The response among Lima’s elite was instantaneous, and the stock market fell precipitously on the assumption that Humala would move rapidly to the left and that investment would disappear. Humala quieted such fears early on, however, by reappointing Julio Velarde, the highly regarded head of the Central Reserve Bank under García, and making Luis Castilla, a centrist, his minister of economics. Moreover, Humala named confidant Salomón Lerner, a high-profile businessman, as the head of his somewhat eclectic cabinet.

Nevertheless, Humala’s basic campaign platform—a commitment to maintaining Peru’s rapid economic growth and to sharing that growth with the country’s indigenous population—was reflected in his creation of a new Ministry of Development and Inclusion. The new president also raised mining royalties substantially (with the consent of the international corporation involved) and signed a prior-consultation law that required dialogue with indigenous groups before mining could proceed. After Humala had been in office for a few months, his approval rating was well over 50%.

Peru still faced many difficulties. Its economy depended largely on mineral exports (primarily gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc) that in turn rested on shifting world prices and the economic well-being of China, the United States, and other more-developed countries. Remnants of the brutal Shining Path insurgency that had paralyzed the country were still active in some remote areas of Peru, and drug production and corruption persisted. Nevertheless, the country had weathered the global economic downturn much better than most of its neighbours and had seen a contentious election come and go with no major hitches.